


Fullmetal versus Fan

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Bordering on crack here., Carnival, Gen, It's some kind of weird possibly canon but also not AU., Just in the setting though.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:57:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1378069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Lan Fan and Edward Elric fight to win a stuffed bear for their girlfriends, and Ling steals from every vending machine on the carnival grounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fullmetal versus Fan

**Author's Note:**

> Backburner fic #4. Written for the prompts: "you like, never write edwin, ever. I know you ship it so could you give it some love maybe?" "Hey, it's the Meifan anon again. Could I request something light-hearted?" "winry and may arguing about their datefriends' automails and whose is better yeeeah".
> 
> Here you go. Written in a weird sort of pre-Promised Day carnival setting. Whichever. Title is a reference to The Miniskirt Episode from the 2003 anime, "Fullmetal versus Flame".
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc.! Enjoy!

“It’s pretty fucking simple. You take the horseshoes—those little circular things that’d probably kill a horse if you tried to slap ‘em on one—and you toss ‘em over those pegs there. If you can get ‘em all, you win this _giant goddamn teddy bear_ that’s like twice the size of your head. Aaaand your girlfriend’s heart.” With a characteristic Elric grin, Ed punched his flesh hand with his automail and lifted his chin up at her in challenge. Lan Fan cracked her head. Flexed her steel fingers until they crackled audibly. “So whad’ya say? Fullmetal versus fullmetal, huh?”

Though she kept her features mostly calm, she could not quite conceal the determination in her smirk. “May the best tosser win.” A beat. She ran her tongue over her upper teeth. “And trust her when she says that she _will_.”

Framed against the lights of the carnival with swirls of blue and pink cotton candy sugaring their faces, May and Winry glanced at one another. Ling had gone off to steal from the vending machines and Al had promised Lan Fan to keep an eye on him, but secretly she suspected that he had left to avoid his brother’s humiliating antics.

Xiao Mei covered her face in her tiny paws.

“Really,” Winry started, nearly choking with the effort to either keep from laughing or keep from dying of embarrassment, “you don’t have to—”

“Of course I do,” replied Lan Fan with a firm briskness as Ed snapped, “I’m doing it for _you_ , Win.”

“Sure you are.” May snorted. “I _bet_ you’re not ‘doing it’ to prove something as stupid as who’s automail is better.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Besides, we already know who has the better automail.”

Winry nodded. “Naturally.” She spun her paper cone of cotton candy as she would her wrench.

Ed dipped his head eagerly as he flung his arm forward to point in her direction, temporarily channeling Maes Hughes cheering on his daughter. “That’s Winry Rockbell! The greatest automail mechanic in the entire world! And anyone else must plainly be delusional, or practically in violation of one of the laws of science!”

Laughing, May shook her head. “Huh? I think that _you’re_ the delusional one here, Ed. No, I meant Lan Fan. I mean, have you _seen_ her automail in act—”

Winry’s eyes narrowed into tiny slits, and Lan Fan almost stepped forward to protect her girlfriend. “As if some piddly spring-loaded knives could best the Rockbell tradition of automail, passed down through the generations—” Dropping the cotton candy, she pressed her palm to her chest and struck a pose of a goddess descended upon the mortal realm. “—and perfected by yours truly!”

“Get real!” May yelled back. “There’s no _way_ that some rusty Amestrisian kid’s doohickey could conquer Xingese automail of the finest make!” She stuck her tongue out at Winry, whose cheeks flared with a fire that threatened to shoot steam from her ears. “You’re just jealous that you didn’t think of spring-loaded weapons!”

“ _Kid’s doohickey_?!”

Winry _seethed_. May _raged_. Briefly Al and Ling showed up at the periphery of their screaming, arms laden with bags of chips and cookies filched from vending machines all over the carnival, took a single peek at their friends about to go down swinging, and fled again.

May stomped her foot on the ground. “Only one way to settle this.”

Voice low and grim, Winry crossed her arms. “Only one way. Ed! Lan Fan! _Throw some goddamn horseshoes, and prove me the best once and for all!_ ”

The automail bearers practically threw themselves at the booth. Behind the absolutely terrified booth-runner hung the massive teddy bear in question. Blue and pink and far too fluffy to properly exist, the teddy bear watched them— _judged_ them—with its glassy black eyes and button black nose and tiny stitched mouth in the shape of a grinning cat’s-face _3_.

Ed slapped the cenz on the counter; it splintered down the middle. “Gimme the horseshoes. I gotta win my girlfriend that bear.”

“You said you could go first?” Lan Fan snarled, then slammed her fist against the counter, breaking it apart even further to the steadily widening eyes of the booth-runner. “Fine. Save the best for last. Have your chance, alchemist, and then the main attraction will swoop in to get that teddy bear from its hook.”

“Bullshit. You’re on.”

Winry and May kept score on massive boards pulled seemingly out of thin air—most likely transmuted when no one was looking—as Ed rang up the points. Five for a small prize, ten for a medium, twenty for the Big One.

He scored nineteen. Scored nineteen, accused the game of cheating and the horseshoes of being spawned of hellfire, questioned the booth-runner’s parentage, demanded a second attempt for free, while Lan Fan bumped him out of the way with her hip.

“ _My_ turn.”

She gripped the horseshoes so tightly in her automail arm that they dented. Ed cried foul. Winry nearly booted her ass and May nearly booted Winry’s as Lan Fan racked up horseshoes on the pegs. One, two, three, five, seven, nine, twelve, fifteen, nineteen.

The final horseshoe.

“Aaand the pitcher’s gettin’ ready. She wiiinds up the pitch. She’s ready to throw a curveshoe, folks. No, no, not a curveshoe, but a fastshoe, the fastest shoe I’ve ever seen in my life, damn is this going to be a kicker folks, and here comes the pitch—bet on this, folks, ‘cause _I’m_ bettin’ my entire life savings that this’ll be gooood—and—and—and . . . here it is . . . and the pitch, folks—”

“Ling, shut _up_.”

“Aww, I was just getting to the— _yoo! It’s a zinger! It’s a real-life zinger and here it is! Laaaan Faaaan has just won her girlfriend the giantest teddy bear in the entire carnival!_ ”

When the booth-runner removes the massive teddy bear from its hook, ze nearly toppled over from the sheer weight of the absolutely gargantuan plush. Lan Fan ripped it gleefully from zir hands while Ed stared, eyes wide and dark, as if the world had ended early and his entire life were flashing before him. He dropped to the ground. His automail knee screeched loudly.

Or maybe that was May, screeching over the sound of the giant puffball of blue and pink fluff. “Lan Fan!” she managed to yelp out. Xiao Mei leaped onto Lan Fan’s head to strike a victory pose; Lan Fan smirked in her pride. Not so much in herself as in her ability to overtly excite her girlfriend about something as wonderfully fanciful as a teddy bear larger than her own self by a factor of three or four. May jumped into her arms. Lan Fan caught her, spun her, kissed her.

Al, recently returned with Ling again, patted his brother and Winry on their shoulders. Winry wept; Ed suddenly developed his own miniature raincloud, because Ed capital-D-capital-C Didn’t Cry, or something. Then Winry’s head snapped up.

She grabbed Ed by the wrist.

Narrowed her eyes. Lowered her voice. Al stepped away as rapidly as armourly possible.

“Ed.”

He transmuted away the raincloud. “Win.”

“Exactly what we’re about to do. There’s always—” She pointed so forcefully with the paper cone of cotton candy that said cotton candy _sailed_ across the sky to land in the hair of a certain dark-haired colonel who had apparently materialised in the carnival specifically to act as a homing beacon for her soaring cotton candy. “—the _shooting galley_.”


End file.
